Mike Hosking

From Generate Greg Smith, welcome to Monday.

Thank you, Mike.

Morning.

Now, those numbers, they keep... I mean, every time you look at the US job numbers and wonder whether things are falling apart, they don't.

There's a few cracks under the surface, actually.

But yeah, payrolls rose 115,000 in April, so that's well ahead of the 55,000 expected.

It's down from 85,000 in March, but that was really strong.

But yeah, when you look at it, Mike, there's certainly some resiliency.

There's over 300,000 jobs added in two months.

It's the strongest run since 2020.

just remember there was basically no jobs added last year.

So online retail, that's a big driver.

Speaking of retail, they did 22,000.

That's seen 340,000 jobs have actually gone since 2022.

Overall unemployment rate, 4.3%.

But, Mike, the participation rate...

fell to 61.8%.

Okay, and then we come to the confidence, and like everywhere around the world at the moment, we're not particularly upbeat.

Yeah, you're absolutely right there.

So jobs market's holding up, but that's not how consumers feel.